NEW HOLLAND, which the Dutch call in Latin Novum Belgium,--in
their own language, Nieuw Nederland, that is to say, New Low
Countries--is situated between Virginia and New England. The
mouth of the river, which some people call Nassau, or the Great
North River, to distinguish it from another which they call the
South River, and which I think is called Maurice River on some
maps that I have recently seen, is at 40 deg. 30 min. The
channel is deep, fit for the largest ships, which ascend to
Manhattes Island, which is seven leagues in circuit, and on
which there is a fort to serve as the commencement of a town
to be built here, and to be called New Amsterdam.
This fort, which is at the point of the island, about five
or six leagues from the [river's] mouth, is called Fort
Amsterdam; it has four regular bastions, mounted with several
pieces or artillery. All these bastions and the curtains were,
in 1643, but mounds, most of which had crumbled away, so that
one entered the fort on all sides. There were no ditches. For
the garrison of the said fort, and another which they had built
still further up against the incursions of the savages, their
enemies, there were sixty soldiers. They were beginning to
face the gates and bastions with stone. Within the fort there
was a pretty large stone church,<1> the house of the Governor,
whom they called Director General, quite neatly built of brick,
the storehouses and barracks.
<1> See De Vries, p. 212, supra, and the _Representation of
New Netherland_.
On the island of Manhate, and in its environs, there may well
be four or five hundred men of different sects and nations:
the Director General told me that there were men of eighteen
different languages; they are scattered here and there on the
river, above and below, as the beauty and convenience of the
spot invited each to settle: some mechanics however, who ply
their trade, are ranged under the fort; all the others were
exposed to the incursions of the natives, who in the year 1643,
while I was there, actually killed some two score Hollanders,
and burnt many houses and barns full of wheat.
The river, which is very straight, and runs due north and south,
is at least a league broad before the fort. Ships lie at anchor
in a bay which forms the other side of the island, and can be
defended by the fort.
Shortly before I arrived there, three large ships of 300 tons
each had come to load wheat; two found cargoes, the third
could not be loaded, because the savages had burnt a part of
the grain. These ships had come from the West Indies, where
the West India Company usually keeps up seventeen ships of
war.
No religion is publicly exercised but the Calvinist, and orders
are to admit none but Calvinists, but this is not observed; for
besides the Calvinists there are in the colony Catholics, English
Puritans, Lutherans, Anabaptists, here called Mnistes,<1> etc.
<1> Mennonistes, Mennonites.
When any one comes to settle in the country, they lend him
horses, cows, etc.; they give him provisions, all which he
returns as soon as he is at ease; and as to the land, after
ten years he pays in to the West India Company the tenth of
the produce which he reaps.
This country is bounded on the New England side by a river
they call the Fresche River,<1> which serves as a boundary
between them and the English. The English, however, come very
near to them, choosing to hold lands under the Hollanders,
who ask nothing, rather than depend on the English Milords,
who exact rents, and would fain be absolute. On the other side,
southward, towards Virginia, its limits are the river which
they call the South River, on which there is also a Dutch
settlement,<2> but the Swedes have one at its mouth extremely
well supplied with cannons and men.<3> It is believed that
these Swedes are maintained by some Amsterdam merchants , who
are not satisfied that the West India Company should alone
enjoy all the commerce of these parts.<4> It is near this river
that a gold mine is reported to have been found.
<1> Connecticut.
<2> Fort Nassau, at the mouth of Timber Creek.
<3> He probably means Fort Nya Elfsborg, on the Jersey side
of Delaware Bay, below Salem.
<4> The reference is to aid rendered by Samuel Blommaert, an
Amsterdam merchant, formerly a director of the Dutch West India
Company, in fitting out the first Swedish expedition in 1637,
and in engaging Peter Minuit to command it. Blommaert's letters
to the Swedish chancellor, Count Axel Oxenstjerna, thirty-eight
in number, 1635-1641, letters of great importance to the history
of New Sweden, have just been published in the _Bijdragen en
Mededeelingen_ of the Utrecht Historical Society, vol. XXIX.
See in the work of the Sieur de Laet of Antwerp, the table
and chapter on New Belgium, as he sometimes calls it, or the
map "Nova Anglia, Novu Belgium et Virginia."<1>
<1> De Laet, _Histoire du Nouveau Monde, table of contents,
bk. III. ch. XII., and map.
It is about fifty years since the Hollanders came to these
parts.<1> The fort was begun in the year 1615; they began to
settle about twenty years ago, and there is already some
little commerce with Virginia and New England.
<1> An exaggeration. There is no evidence of Dutch visits
before Hudson's.
The first comers found lands fit for use, deserted by the
savages, who formerly had fields here. Those who came later
have cleared the woods, which are mostly oak. The soil is
good. Deer hunting is abundant in the fall. There are some
houses built of stone; lime they make of oyster shells, great
heaps of which are found here, made formerly by the savages,
who subsist in part by that fishery.
The climate is very mild. Lying at 40 2/3 degrees there are
many European fruits, as apples, pears, cherries. I reached
there in October, and found even then a considerable quantity
of peaches.
Ascending the river to the 43d degree, you meet the second
[Dutch] settlement, which the tide reaches but does not pass.
Ships of a hundred and a hundred and twenty tons can come up
to it.
There are two things in this settlement (which is called
Renselaerswick, as if to say, settlement of Renselaers, who
is a rich Amsterdam merchant)--first, a miserable little fort
called Fort Orenge, built of logs, with four or five pieces
of Breteuil cannon, and as many pedereros. This has been
reserved and is maintained by the West India Company. This
fort was formerly on an island in the river; it is now on the
mainland, towards the Hiroquois, a little above the said island.
Secondly, a colony sent here by this Renselaers, who is the
patron. This colony is composed of about a hundred persons,
who reside in some twenty-five or thirty houses built along
the river, as each found most convenient. In the principal
house resides the patron's agent; the minister has his apart,
in which service is performed. There is also a kind of bailiff
here, whom they call the seneschal,<1> who administers justice.
All their houses are merely of boards and thatched, with no
mason work except the chimneys. The forest furnishing many
large pines, they make boards by means of their mills, which
they have here for the purpose.
<1> The schout.
They found some pieces of ground all ready, which the savages
had formerly cleared, and in which they sow wheat and oats for
beer, and for their horses, of which they have great numbers.
There is little land fit for tillage, being hemmed in by hills,
which are poor soil. This obliges them to separate, and they
already occupy two or three leagues of country.
Trade is free to all; this gives the Indians all things cheap,
each of the Hollanders outbidding his neighbor, and being
satisfied provided he can gain some little profit.
This settlement is not more than twenty leagues from the
Agniehronons,<1> who can be reached by land or water, as the
river on which the Iroquois lie,<2> falls into that which
passes by the Dutch; but there are many low rapids, and a fall
of a short half league, where the canoe must be carried.
<1> The Mohawks.
<2> Mohawk River.
There are many nations between the two Dutch settlements,
which are about thirty German leagues apart, that is, about
fifty or sixty French leagues.<1> The Wolves, whom the Iroquois
call Agotsaganens,<2> are the nearest to the settlement of
Renselaerswick and to Fort Orange. War breaking out some years
ago between the Iroquois and the Wolves, the Dutch joined the
latter against the former; but four men having been taken and
burnt, they made peace. Since then some nations near the sea
having killed some Hollanders of the most distant settlement,
the Hollanders killed one hundred and fifty Indians, men, women
and children, they having, at divers times, killed forty
Hollanders, burnt many houses, and committed ravages, estimated
at the time that I was there at 200,000 l. (two hundred thousand
livres).<3> Troops were raised in New England. Accordingly,
in the beginning of winter, the grass being trampled down and
some snow on the ground, they gave them chase with six hundred
men, keeping two hundred always on the move and constantly
relieving one another; so that the Indians, shut up in a large
island, and unable to flee easily, on account of their women
and children, were cut to pieces to the number of sixteen
hundred, including women and children. This obliged the rest
of the Indians to make peace, which still continues. This
occurred in 1643 and 1644.<4>
<1> One hundred and fifty English miles.
<2> The Mohicans.
<3> Livres tournois or francs, worth two or three times as
much as francs at the time.
<4> See _The Journal of New Netherland_.
>From Three Rivers in New France, August 3, 1646.